1. [common] Variety, type, kind. “DDT commands come in two
flavors.” “These lights come in two flavors, big red ones and
small green ones.” “Linux is a flavor of Unix” See
vanilla.

2. The attribute that causes something to be
flavorful. Usually used in the phrase “yields
additional flavor”. “This convention yields additional flavor
by allowing one to print text either right-side-up or upside-down.”
See vanilla. This usage was certainly reinforced by
the terminology of quantum chromodynamics, in which quarks (the
constituents of, e.g., protons) come in six flavors (up, down, strange,
charm, top, bottom) and three colors (red, blue, green) — however,
hackish use of flavor at MIT predated
QCD.

3. The term for class (in the
object-oriented sense) in the LISP Machine Flavors system. Though the
Flavors design has been superseded (notably by the Common LISP CLOS
facility), the term flavor is still
used as a general synonym for class
by some LISP hackers.